What The Cowboys Did After The Cattle Drives Ended

howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas
where we have a cold front moving in! Yep, temperatures are
supposed to be in the low 90s all week which will be a welcome
relief for sure.

Someone asked me what happened to all the cowboys when the
big Cattle Drives ended so I figured I'd talk about that for a short
spell.

First of all, why did the Cattle Drives come to an end? There were
two main reasons and they both happened at the same time. The
first reason is that the railroads were stretching farther into new
territories closer to the ranges which had the cattle, primarily
all of Texas.

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That's just a fact folks, we supplied the entire country with beef,
generally speaking. So instead of having to drive the cattle to
Dodge City from South Texas, they could be driven to Dallas for
instance, very large difference in distance, just look at a map.

The second reason is that thousands of permanent ranches
were forming and those ranchers didn't want huge numbers
of cattle being driven through their pastures and lands because
they needed that for their own cattle.

So they put up barbed wire fences that looked like this:

source

So what did the Cattle Drives do when they suddenly came upon
barbed wire fences? They cut the wire and drove the cattle on
through of course!

This is what caused what they call The Range Wars. I might do a
post on that sometime but basically what amounted to a few
skirmishes and some people DID get killed, it wasn't what you
could call a WAR.

Of course Hollywood saw it differently and many movies ..let's
just say "embellished" the truth. But for a time is WAS a serious
situation and there was a great deal of tension between the
ranchers driving the cattle and the ranchers with permanent
homesteads trying to protect their grass from being over-grazed.

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Because the cattle herds weren't just walking along for 4 or 5
months...they were like us, they ATE while they moseyed along
lol. am I right? would you walk all day without eating if you had
the chance to eat? Not a chance.

Fuel. A body's gotta have fuel! And so it was no different for these
big guys. So obviously this wasn't going to work. With increasing
problems with fencing and the progression of railroads into the
formerly railroadless areas, the cattle drives were deemed ..not the
best choice.

They didn't go the way of the Dinosaur right away however. There
were still smaller Cattle Drives traveling shorter distances. And I
might add, with negotiations with many ranchers along the way.

source
See.. Texans work out their problems amongst themselves..
after a few dozen people were killed. But we didn't need the Feds
to help solve the problem.

So what did these Cowpokes do when their way of life was suddenly
taken away? And remember, one third of these were Black men with
like..ZERO chance of getting a job that was slightly above slavery..
at that time.

Well they went to work for the breeders and cattle ranchers which
ran all these big herds except all the free ranges were being fenced
off so they became permanent ranch hands working for the ranches.

What I found interesting is that for some reason they started holding
competitions between ranches for all the skills which they used on
the cattle drives like roping, riding bucking horses, herding,
branding. They quickly became annual events at the ranches.

But what really made them popular were the Wild West shows put
on by Buffalo Bill which featured cowboys doing all these things like
roping and throwing down calves and such. One of the most famous
cowboys was a Black man named Bill Picket.

source

I'm out of time for tonight folks and my internet connection keeps
going out so I will take this up tomorrow on what this developed
into.

thanks so much for reading, God bless you all!
-jonboy Texas
the gentleman redneck

ps- ya know, you might just be a redneck if:

your fur coat is homemade!